Secret Palermo

The experience

It is the dark Palermo, woven of shadows and secrets, of catacombs and mysterious hooded men, of magicians and legends.

The Palermo of the Spanish Inquisition Prisons, unique in the world, where for two centuries – from the early seventeenth century to 1782 – the men sent to Sicily by Torquemada interrogated and tortured innocent people in the name of God. Alleged heretics, blasphemers, sorcerers – in reality they were intellectuals inconvenient to power – who left an extraordinary testimony on the walls of the cells with drawings, stories, prayers, poems before being freed or ending up at the stake. A unique testimony in the world that is both a work of art and an indictment against the injustices of power.
The prison is located in the Steri complex, a fourteenth-century building that has some masterpieces, including the famous ceiling of the Sala Magna, the only medieval painted ceiling of a secular building that has been preserved in the world, a medieval encyclopedia of more than 270 square meters, and the Vucciria by Renato Guttuso, an iconic image of the most famous market in Palermo.
Not far away is the Oratory of San Lorenzo, the masterpiece of Giacomo Serpotta, a genius of stucco, with the “clone” of Caravaggio’s Nativity stolen in 1968, the number one art theft on the FBI list.
Around it unfolds the Kalsa district, with the ficus of Piazza Marina which is the tree with the largest foliage in Europe – a green giant on which you want to try to climb – with its wonderful churches, with its palaces, with its street food temples, with the Oratorio dei Bianchi, another mysterious place: home of that Compagnia dei Bianchi, so called because the friars wore a white dress.

In 1541, the viceroy Ferdinando Gonzaga entrusted them with the task of providing the last comfort to the condemned, three days before their execution. Luigi Natoli was probably inspired by these characters in writing “The Beati Paoli”. Who were the followers of this secret society? Executioners or ferocious murderers?

After a lunch in a typical trattoria that only a few true “insiders” know, you will discover it in the walk through the alleys of the Capo market, in the company of an extraordinary guide, who will also introduce you to the history of the Count of Cagliostro, the famous esotericist and alchemist who grew up in the alleys of the city.